"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" – The Session of the Second Chamber in Berlin

The Session of the Second Chamber in Berlin, 13 April

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 277, 20 April 1849]

*
Cologne, 19 April. For a change we return once more to our dear Berlin Second Chamber. It has scrutinised elections, issued addresses, fabricated its own rules of procedure and, with a particularly rare interest, dealt with a question that, as we know, belongs to the feuilleton of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*: the German imperial question. All this has passed quite unnoticed amid the thunder of cannon at Novara and Pest, and even the “naval battle” off Eckernförde together with the storming of the Düppel entrenchments produced more effect than all the right and left speeches of the Prussian people’s representatives put together.

But now, when the honourable Chamber is occupying itself with the three gagging laws, the Poster Law, the Club Law and the Press Law, when it has already disposed of one of them, the Poster Law, now the matter comes rather closer to us, now it becomes more interesting to see how our gentlemen deputies do their utmost to supplement the imposed constitution.

Let us take up the stenographic report of the 26th sitting of 13 April.

Deputy Lisiecki first interpellates the Ministry concerning the use of the Polish Landwehr in the Danish war.

According to § 61 of the Landwehr Act, the Landwehr is to be called up only in the event of unexpected hostile attacks upon the country. Its whole organisation is based on the principle that it is to be used solely when the standing army and the reserve are inadequate. And now, in the war against little Denmark, with which a single army corps of the line would be able to cope, the Landwehr is called up!

That is not enough. Although the allegedly German Posen was conjured into the German Confederation only by a breach of word and by brute force, although the part lying beyond the famous demarcation line has, by all treaties, nothing whatever to do with the German Confederation, part of the Landwehr sent to Schleswig is taken from Posen on both this side and the far side of the demarcation line.

This Landwehr,
of purely Polish
nationality, and half of it not even belonging to the German Confederation, is shipped off to Schleswig in order to have itself shot dead there, with the German black-red-gold imperial cockade on its helmet, as
German
imperial troops, for the greater glory of
Germany
!

The “
German
war” in Lombardy was decided by the Croats; the “German” struggle against Vienna was decided by the Czechs, Ruthenians and likewise the Croats; the “German” war in Schleswig will be decided by the
Poles
. Such are the soldiers with whom the “victories of German arms” are won nowadays!

And this is how a king keeps the word he gave the Poles on 11 April through his plenipotentiary commissioner:

“Accordingly, no recruits born in the Grand Duchy of Posen shall be assigned to a Silesian or other German regiment, and conversely no German recruits to a Polish regiment. The troops shall drill and be commanded in their own language … the Polish army system, in all branches of service, shall also become a
completely self-contained whole
,” etc.

Lisiecki expounds these various points in calm but resolute language and finally draws attention to the special malice involved in raising three battalions of Landwehr precisely in the only province that suffered severely last year from a civil war imposed upon it by the Prussians.

Herr Strotha, the Minister of War, rises.

The Herr Minister delivers to the assembly, at some length, a lecture on the fact that “the entire Prussian army organisation is based on the combination of line and Landwehr, a combination which in war extends through the corps and divisional union right down to the brigade union,” that the detachment of “mere line troops without Landwehr to a distant theatre of war essentially disrupts the organic union of several parts of the body of troops and produces all sorts of serious drawbacks in the event of the mobilisation of the parts that remain behind,” etc. All very well calculated to shed a strange light upon the organisation of “My glorious army” for the philistines and civil servants in the Chamber.

That may be. It is possible that “My glorious army, the line” cannot manage without “My glorious army, the Landwehr.” It may be that the dangerous Danish potato war compels the government to bring into play all the chicaneries of the glorious Prussian defence constitution. But why have the
Poles
in particular been made the victims of this fate, which is rooted in the glorious Prussian defence constitution?

Because – well, “because
the circumstances of the moment justified it
!”

That is all we learn. That is how a Prussian Minister of War answers interpellations.

There remains the legal question to be answered, whether German troops are not to be used for German imperial wars. On this point Herr Strotha declares:

1. “The Grand Duchy of Posen, with the exception of a small part … belongs to Germany.”

That is the Prussian translation of last year’s phrases – that Posen was to become Polish, “with the exception of a small part” of the frontier which had to become German. Now one is far enough advanced to be able to dispense with the phrase and admits the perpetrated fraud in bald words.

2. “In the division of the military districts of the whole Grand Duchy of Posen, no change has so far been introduced. Accordingly (!) the three battalions called up are (!) composed of about half inhabitants from this side and half from the far side of the demarcation line.”

In German: The whole buffoonery with the demarcation line has merely served to incorporate two-thirds of Posen directly, and the remaining third indirectly, into Germany. But so that the Poles may at last abandon the illusion that this line has any meaning in practice, we have now raised our imperial troops precisely from the districts which the line cuts through.

3. “In the employment of the line troops drawn from the Grand Duchy of Posen, no consideration has ever been taken other than that required by the
purposes of the state
.”

And if, in the case of the line, the solemn obligations of March and April 1848 have been trampled underfoot, why should one not do the same in the case of the Landwehr? Can a Polish Landwehr man not become just as good an “imperial trooper” as a Polish soldier of the line?

We have taken account only of the “purposes of the state”!

And what are these “purposes of the state”?

They are obvious. The intention is to remove from their homeland the population capable of bearing arms and trained to arms, belonging to those regions which have not yet sufficiently amalgamated with the “Prussian fatherland.” The intention is to punish the refractory primary electors who have voted in an un-Prussian fashion. The intention is to give these primary electors a better notion of the duties of a citizen by putting them through a supplementary training course in the school of “My glorious army.” By Prussian treatment, many a hated voter will be provoked to insubordination, and then, with the greatest nonchalance, he may be pardoned by means of fifteen years’ hard labour, perhaps even by powder and shot at a drumhead court-martial.

That is why the Landwehr has been called up in Posen and in part of the Rhine Province and Westphalia. Herr Strotha says nothing of the Rhine Province, and yet the Cleves battalion is already in Schleswig. Or does Herr Strotha intend to introduce a demarcation line in the Rhine Province as well and to declare: the Rhine Province, “with the exception of a small part,” belongs to Westphalia?

But what is not yet may yet come to pass. If the greater part of the Rhine Province has so far still been spared the call-up, we know, despite all denials, that the intention
is certainly firmly established
also to mobilise the Landwehr of the
Eighth
Corps, i.e., of the Rhine Province. Preparations for this are already being made, and the order will not be long delayed.

This, too, is of course required by the “purposes of the state” and justified by the “circumstances of the moment.”

And when the Rhenish deputies interpellate, Herr Strotha will answer them as he now answers Herr Lisiecki: The matter “has
already
been settled in practice, for the Rhenish division is already concentrated at Flensburg”!

After Herr Strotha had finished, Herr Lisiecki wished to make a correction of the facts. But the rules of procedure forbid factual corrections to the answers of ministers. And the rules of procedure are right. What un-Prussian impudence, to presume that a ministerial answer might be susceptible of a correction of the facts!